DigiWells: Digital Well Center for Value Creation, Competitiveness and Minimum Environmental Footprint

What we do

Digitalization, new sensors, new high-speed telemetry solutions, automation, autonomy, and improved work processes has the potential to enable a step change of the well delivery process. The centre will explore these possibilities by combining domain knowledge with fundamental research to accelerate the digital transformation of the well delivery process. The centre aims to develop work processes for planning drilling and well operations, new sensors, solutions for interoperability, solutions for automated and autonomous drilling, and decision support systems for geosteering. New solutions will be demonstrated at the national research infrastructures OpenLab Drilling, Ullrigg and against field data from operators.

The centre will become a collaborative arena for operators, service industry, public authorities, research institutions and academia in Norway and internationally. Results from the centre’s activity will enable innovation, business development, and value creation for the Norwegian society. Moreover, in collaboration with universities, the centre will educate the next generation of specialists who will help implement the achieved research results.

Why is this important?

Drilling and well costs often constitute up to 50% of the total field development costs. According to the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate, drilling more wells is the most important means to increase recovery from existing fields. Decision making and optimization during planning and execution of drilling and well operations is challenging due to subsurface uncertainty, limited availability of measurements, and need for interaction between different disciplines and different commercial players. Profitable wells become increasingly important for development and operation and indirectly resource management at the Norwegian Continental Shelf.

Goals

The objective of the center is to develop new knowledge, methodologies, and innovative solutions to improve the well delivery process enabled by digitalization, new sensors, high speed telemetry, automation, and autonomy.